Humboldt University of Berlin

Wilhelm Carl Werner Otto Fritz Franz Wien was a German physicist who, in 1893, used theories about heat and electromagnetism to deduce Wien's... displacement law, which calculates the emission of a blackbody at any temperature from the emission at any one reference temperature. He also formulated an expression for the black-body radiation which is correct in the photon-gas limit. His arguments were based on the notion of adiabatic invariance, and were instrumental for the formulation of quantum mechanics. Wien received the 1911 Nobel Prize for his work on heat radiation. Wien was born at Gaffken near Fischhausen , Province of Prussia as the son of landowner Carl Wien. In 1866, his family moved to Drachstein, in Rastenburg . In 1879, Wien went to school in Rastenburg and from 1880-1882 he attended the city school of Heidelberg. In 1882 he attended the University of Göttingen and the University of Berlin. From 1883-85, he worked in the laboratory of Hermann von Helmholtz and, in 1886, he received his Ph.D.
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Wassily Wassilyovich Leontief , was a Russian-American economist notable for his research on how changes in one economic sector may have an effect on... other sectors. Leontief won the Nobel Committee's Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1973, and three of his doctoral students have also been awarded the prize . Wassily Leontief was born on August 5, 1905, in Munich, Germany, the son of Wassily W. Leontief and Slata Leontief . W. Leontief, Sr., belonged to a dynasty of old-believer merchants living in St. Petersburg since 1741. Genya Becker belonged to a wealthy Jewish family from Odessa. At 15 in 1921, Wassily, Jr., entered University of Leningrad in present day St. Petersburg. He earned his Learned Economist degree in 1924 at the age of 19. Leontief sided with campaigners for academic autonomy, freedom of speech and in support of Pitirim Sorokin. As a consequence, he was detained several times by the Cheka.
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Albert Abraham Michelson was an American physicist known for his work on the measurement of the speed of light and especially for the... Michelson-Morley experiment. In 1907 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics. He became the first American to receive the Nobel Prize in sciences. Michelson was born in Strzelno, Provinz Posen in the Kingdom of Prussia into a Jewish family. He moved to the US with his parents in 1855, at the age of two. He grew up in the mining towns of Murphy's Camp, California and Virginia City, Nevada, where his father was a merchant. Despite his family being Jewish by birth, his family were non-religious. Michelson was later said to be a lifelong agnostic. He spent his high school years in San Francisco in the home of his aunt, Henriette Levy , who was the mother of author Harriet Lane Levy. President Ulysses S. Grant awarded Michelson a special appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy in 1869. During his four years as a midshipman at the Academy, Michelson excelled in optics, heat, climatology and drawing.
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Karl Ferdinand Braun was a German inventor, physicist and Nobel laureate in physics. Braun contributed significantly to the development of the radio... and television technology: he shared with Guglielmo Marconi the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics. Braun was born in Fulda, Germany, and educated at the University of Marburg and received a Ph.D. from the University of Berlin in 1872. In 1874 he discovered that a point-contact semiconductor rectifies alternating current. He became director of the Physical Institute and professor of physics at the University of Strassburg in 1895. In 1897 he built the first cathode-ray tube and cathode ray tube oscilloscope. CRT technology has been replaced by flat screen technologies , light emitting diode and plasma displays on television sets and computer monitors. The CRT is still called the "Braun tube" in German-speaking countries and in Japan . During the development of radio, he also worked on wireless telegraphy. In 1897 Braun joined the line of wireless pioneers.
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Walther Hermann Nernst FRS was a German physical chemist and physicist who is known for his theories behind the calculation of chemical affinity as... embodied in the third law of thermodynamics, for which he won the 1920 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Nernst helped establish the modern field of physical chemistry and contributed to electrochemistry, thermodynamics, solid state chemistry and photochemistry. He is also known for developing the Nernst equation. Nernst was born in Briesen in West Prussia as son of Gustav Nernst, who was a country judge. Gustav died when Walther was only 24 years old. His mother was Polish and died when Nernst was young. Walther also had three older sisters and one younger brother. The third sister died due to cholera . Nernst went to elementary school at Graudentz. He studied physics and mathematics at the universities of Zürich, Berlin, Graz and Würzburg, where he graduated in 1887. It was said that Nernst was mechanically minded in that he was always thinking of ways to apply new discoveries to industry. Nernst's hobbies included the pastimes of hunting and fishing.
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Peter Joseph William Debye FRS was a Dutch physicist and physical chemist, and Nobel laureate in Chemistry. Born Petrus Josephus Wilhelmus Debije in... Maastricht, Netherlands, Debye attended the Aachen University of Technology, Rhenish Prussia just 30 km away in 1901. He studied mathematics and classical physics, and, in 1905, received a degree in electrical engineering. In 1907, he published his first paper, a mathematically elegant solution of a problem involving eddy currents. At Aachen, he studied under the theoretical physicist Arnold Sommerfeld, who later claimed that his most important discovery was Peter Debye. In 1906, Sommerfeld received an appointment at Munich, Bavaria, and took Debye with him as his assistant. Debye got his Ph.D. with a dissertation on radiation pressure in 1908. In 1910, he derived the Planck radiation formula using a method which Max Planck agreed was simpler than his own. In 1911, when Albert Einstein took an appointment as a professor at Prague, Bohemia, Debye took his old professorship at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.
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Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger was an Austrian born physicist and theoretical biologist who was one of the fathers of quantum... mechanics, and is famed for a number of important contributions to physics, especially the Schrödinger equation, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933. In 1935 he proposed the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment. In 1887 Schrödinger was born in Vienna, Austria to Rudolf Schrödinger and Georgine Emilia Brenda . His mother was half Austrian and half English; His father was Catholic and his mother was Lutheran. Despite having a religious background, he was later said to be an atheist. In 1898 he attended the Akademisches Gymnasium. Between 1906 and 1910 Schrödinger studied in Vienna under Franz Serafin Exner and Friedrich Hasenöhrl . He also conducted experimental work with Karl Wilhelm Friedrich "Fritz" Kohlrausch 1884–1953. In 1911 Schrödinger became an assistant to Exner.
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Hermann Emil Fischer, Emil Fischer was a German chemist and 1902 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He discovered the Fischer... esterification. He developed the Fischer projection, a symbolic way of drawing asymmetric carbon atoms. Fischer was born in Euskirchen, near Cologne, the son of a businessman. After graduating he wished to study natural sciences, but his father compelled him to work in the family business until determining that his son was unsuitable. Fischer then attended the University of Bonn in 1872, but switched to the University of Strasbourg in 1872. He earned his doctorate in 1874 with his study of phthalein and was appointed to a position at the university. In 1875 von Baeyer was asked to succeed Liebig at the University of Munich and Fischer went there with him to become an assistant in organic chemistry. In 1878 Fischer qualified as a Privatdozent at Munich, where he was appointed Associate Professor of Analytical Chemistry in 1879. In the same year he was offered, but refused, the Chair of Chemistry at Aachen.
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